Tuesday, June 15, 2004

This is the fifth installment of What Tax Profs Are Reading. The goal is to share with the broader tax community reviews of both tax-related and nontax-related books recently read by tax professors. We invite tax professors to submit book reviews for publication on TaxProf Blog.

Jim Maule (Villanova) shares with us his thoughts on Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.

“Lost Christianities” is an exploration of the history of the first three centuries of the Christian Church. Or perhaps, more accurately, the Christian churches. The sort of stuff one doesn’t get in Sunday School, CCD classes, Bible camp, or from most pulpits, the material into which Ehrman delves includes not only the traditionally accepted Scriptures but dozens of other books which ultimately were excluded from the Canon (which Ehrman published in an companion volume).

So, does this have anything to do with tax? Yes, in a surprising way that introduced itself to me in the last chapter, so hang on for a bit.

Ehrman explains that the various Gospels, Epistles, Apocalypses, and other writings that were rejected at some point (including many that were rediscovered only during the past century) demonstrate two points. First, they were documents used and studied by various groups within the umbrella of what I call “primitive Christianity.” Second, they were rejected because the group that eventually came to dominate early Christianity (which Ehrman designates the “proto-orthodox” in an admittedly loose characterization) disagreed with one or more of the theological points set forth in, or supported by, these writings. What is surprising, and at least serendipitous because it gives Ehrman something about which to write, is that the effort to destroy these writings (and to erase all memory of the diverseness of primitive Christianity) was far from a complete success.

Ehrman carefully explains the theologies advanced by some of the many schools of thought in apostolic and later times. Perhaps theology is too strong a word for belief sets that were in a state of change, growth, and modification. This book is a good reference for those who don’t want to invest significant time in voluminous theological treatises to learn the essence of what made the Ebionites, Marcionites, Gnostics, Adoptionists, Patripassianists, and Montanists, to name a few, different one from another. A review like this is not the place to map out these groups; its role is,in part, to encourage the reader to pick up Ehrman’s book and read.

To the surprise, perhaps, of many who were taught that Christianity was a monolithic movement that did not begin to splinter until several centuries into its existence, the picture of feuding, divisive, antagonistic, antipathetic, and manipulative Christian groups fermenting in a broth of the religion’s embryonic development is far from what one would expect simply from analyzing non-canonical scriptures. Yet the intensity with which these groups debated the number of gods, the relationship between Christ and Jesus, the meaning of text, the need for apostolic succession, the role of prophecy, and the status of Judaism and Jews is no less overwhelming than that which marked the European religious wars (literally and figuratively) during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Writings were forged, changed, redacted, and augmented. Multiple versions of the books in the Christian Scriptures circulated around the Mediterranean. At least one person (Tatian by name) tried to synthesize the four, sometimes inconsistent, proto-Orthodox Gospels, creating something called the Diatesseron, which was used in Syria as the only Gospel for several centuries.

In short, the simple (or simplistic), straight-line history that is proclaimed throughout much of the Christian world just isn’t so. Ehrman’s thesis is that perhaps the history could have developed differently. It is here that the book should appeal to those who enjoy the “what if” exercises of trying to determine the impact of a change in the outcome of one event or decision on subsequent proceedings. What if the view of the Marcionites or the Ebionites or the Gnostics had prevailed?

The list of questions are surely longer than those Ehrman suggests, because he does not let himself get too tangled in the mazes of the “what if” world. The big question, of course, is whether Christianity would have ended up as the dominant religious, social, political, economic, and cultural institution of the West had Marcionite, Ebionite, Gnostic, or some other variant had emerged as the principal form of Christianity. Ehrman concludes that the characteristics of proto-Orthodoxy had appeal to Constantine that the other variants probably would not have had. Had Constantine not involved himself in the church and the church in the Empire as he did (scholars debate whether he actually “converted”), surely Western history would have been different. What it would have been is anyone’s educated guess. And though Ehrman does not delve into the matter, a different Western history would have meant a different history in every other area of the world.

Now to the tax piece. Sorry for the long “bit” in “hang on for a bit.” One of the differences among the various primitive Christian groups was the significance of text. Some saw it as literal, meaning what it said. Others (especially Gnostics) saw it as figurative, as a clue or hint to a deeper meaning (accessible, in the view of the Gnostics, only to a spiritual elite that could comprehend the secret teachings). Ehrman raises the prospect of an intellectual and cultural legacy of text reading altered by the type of approach adopted by Christianity in its scripture reading. A Western culture in which text had a predominantly figurative rather than literal character would, as Ehrman puts it, make us wonder whether we would “be able to read a newspaper the way we do today.” Of course, if the history that would have transpired had some other group come to define Christianity included taxation and tax codes, I wonder whether we would be able to read a tax code the way we do today.

I don’t know. The “what if” game can get one’s brain spinning when it simply involves one event that occurred an hour, day, week, or even year or two ago. Playing that game when looking back over two millenia could cause permanent cerebral damage. At my age, it’s dangerous to risk brain cells.

Ehrman’s “Lost Christianities,” though obviously of interest to those with theological, spiritual or intellectual interest or investment in Christianity, should also entice those who understand that for everyone, the impact of Christianity on history is so strong that its origins deserve a closer look than most folks get a chance or find the time to study. It’s a easy read, spans a manageable 250 pages, and is difficult to put down.

For prior TaxProf Book Reviews, see:
• Jim Maule’s review of Dragon’s Kin
• Jim Maule’s review of James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age
• Paul Caron’s review of Courting the Yankees: Legal Essays on the Bronx Bombers
• Joel Newman’s review of Perfectly Legal